


Ladder 126, Please Respond

by trashpup



Series: 911, What's Your Emergency? [9]
Category: 9-1-1: Lone Star (TV 2020)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Emotional Hurt, F/M, Gen, I Don't Even Know, Missing Scene, Not Beta Read, it's 5am
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-03
Updated: 2020-05-03
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:40:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23980966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trashpup/pseuds/trashpup
Summary: The explosion, the one that took the lives of sons, husbands, and fathers. Grace stood up from her chair, gasping for air, unable to breathe. Her hands were shaking as she tried to force the words out.“Ladder 126, do you copy?”There was no answer. There was no Judd. All Grace could hear was the sounds of the fire still crackling over the radio, debris still falling. She prayed that everyone could be saved.“Ladder 126, please respond.”
Relationships: Grace Ryder/Judd Ryder (9-1-1 Lone Star)
Series: 911, What's Your Emergency? [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1663795
Comments: 7
Kudos: 55
Collections: 9-1-1 Tales





	Ladder 126, Please Respond

**Author's Note:**

> oop. my bad, lol
> 
> it's short and i did not read through it. all mistakes are my own, it's nearly 5:30am.
> 
> good night!

Grace knew there was only so much that God could do in times like this, but it didn’t stop her from praying. She hated not being able to save everyone, but she knew there was nothing she could do beyond the phone. She was in dispatch for a reason, but, having Judd out on the front lines, risking his life every day made her pray a little harder every morning and every evening. 

She got the call a little after 8pm, Judd would be at work by then, and Grace hoped that she didn’t have to dispatch the 126 to this particular call. She got the address from the caller and dispatched the nearest ladder truck. 

The 126.

She sent a prayer to Heaven, praying for the men in the 126, hoping they would be safe. She was interrupted by a call from a man, the call pinged at the same location as the previous call, so she radioed to the 126, waiting for someone to respond. And someone did, Judd did. 

“We just got a call, in Spanish, from a maintenance man. Said they store fertiliser - ammonium nitrate - in that facility. Y’all need to pull those men back,” Grace spoke with urgency, not knowing how much time they would have, or how far away they were. She stayed on the line with Judd, listening to him scream to his brothers at the top of his lungs.

“Hey, Engine 126! Engine 126, fall back! Fall back! Fall back!” Judd’s voice was getting louder and louder, but his words fell on deaf ears as no one was able to hear him. Then, it happened.

The explosion, the one that took the lives of sons, husbands, and fathers. Grace stood up from her chair, gasping for air, unable to breathe. Her hands were shaking as she tried to force the words out.

“Ladder 126, do you copy?”

There was no answer. There was no Judd. All Grace could hear was the sounds of the fire still crackling over the radio, debris still falling. She prayed that everyone could be saved. 

“Ladder 126, please respond.”

She forced her voice to get a little louder, her voice cracking. She held a hand on her ear piece and a hand on her chest, feeling her own heart race.

“Ladder 126?”

The people closest to her in the dispatch center were starting to notice that Grace needed help. Her voice had gotten louder, more desperate, as she asked for someone, anyone, to respond. 

“Ladder 126…” 

Grace felt defeated. She lost him, she was sure of it. She had no idea how close Judd was to that explosion when it happened, but it sounded like he’d been running towards it, and it was her fault. She couldn’t breathe, Lord knew she’d been holding her breath through the entire call, but now it felt like the end of the world. 

She lost her world.

-

Grace has no idea how long she sat in her chair, but she wasn’t getting calls and that’s all she could think about. She looked up and saw her boss standing by her, watching her as she calmed herself down. 

“Grace, there’s a cop car waiting to take you to the hospital,” Grace moved to interrupt, but her boss' hand stopped her before she could speak. “Grace, listen to me, Judd is alive.” 

She broke down all over again. God answered her prayer, but she couldn’t thank Him yet, she needed to see him to be sure. So, she got up on shaky legs, grabbing her things and heading towards the door, getting assistance when needed. She saw the police car waiting for her, Carlos standing out by the door. 

He’d been in the call center a couple times, still fairly new on the force, but Grace had liked him in the few times she’d seen him, he looked nice enough. He opened the door for her and helped her sit down, not commenting on how she looked or how disheveled she looked. 

Carlos flipped on the light bar and the siren and weaved in and out of traffic, moving as fast as he could, getting to the hospital in record time. Grace thanked him quietly, unbuckling her seatbelt and opening the door, stumbling out onto the pavement. 

“Let me help,” Carlos was by her in an instant, holding out his hand if she wanted to take it. So, she did, letting him lead her inside. She took deep breaths as she sat in the waiting room alone. Carlos had to leave to go back to work, but left his number in case she needed him.

There was seemingly no end in sight throughout the night, she wasn’t allowed to see him until he was stabilised, which took longer than expected. In the early hours of the morning, a doctor came out and called out “Ryder? Grace Ryder?” Her eyes shot open at the mention of her name and she stood up, immediately asking questions. 

“Is he okay?”

“What injuries does he have?”

“Am I allowed to see him? If not, when?” 

One after the other, she rapidly fired question after question, barely giving the doctor enough time to finish the answer before asking another. 

“Mr. Ryder is going to be okay.”

“He has a few fractured ribs, smoke inhalation, bruises down his side, and possible hearing loss, but we won’t know until he wakes up. He’s extremely lucky he was where he was at the time of the explosion, any closer and he would’ve perished with everyone else.”

The lone survivor, but not alone. 

“Can I see him?” Grace asked. She felt helpless, small. She needed to see her husband, let him know everything would be alright, even if it wasn’t now, it would be soon.

The doctor led Grace down a hallway, door after door closed to the outside world. They came across an open door with a man laying on the bed inside. Judd. He’d never looked so vulnerable in his life and it pained Grace to see.   
“Oh, Judd,” Grace let out a breath, tears springing to her eyes as she walked in and began to see the extent of Judd’s injuries up close. There was dried blood that had run down Judd’s ear. “I can clean him off?” 

The doctor simply nodded and turned to walk about, presumably to get a washrag for her. Grace took Judd’s hand in her own, unable to hold back her tears any longer. There was so much she wanted to say to Judd, but she wanted to wait until he was awake and not in as much pain as he currently had to be in. 

She stayed with Judd until he woke up, and when he woke up, he knew, he already knew everyone was gone. He felt the same guilt that Grace felt, the same helpless feeling that pooled in the pit of their stomachs. 

She spent hours holding him at night when he tried to sleep and was woken up not long after with a nightmare. He made her promise she wouldn’t tell anyone, in return she made him promise to tell his therapist. 

The therapist that he had to see to finish his CSID before he’s allowed to return to work. It’s been months, he swears he’s fine, but Grace can see through the lies. She watches him struggle with his thoughts at night, trying to control himself during the day. 

If he’d just talk to his therapist instead of sitting and stewing for the entire hour, there wouldn’t be a problem, but Judd insisted he was fine and that he didn’t have PTSD, even though the symptoms were obvious. Grace knew it, Judd’s therapist knew it, Judd probably knew it was true, but he didn’t want to admit it, because that would make it real and that would bring more up that he wasn’t ready to handle. 

Grace wanted to help, but there wasn’t much that she could do for Judd when he wouldn’t even talk to her. She spent six weeks trying to do everything she could to ease the burden on Judd. The six weeks he spent in the hospital, Grace worked overtime nearly every day. 

Of course Judd was still getting paid, he was hurt on the job, and they both had insurance through work. It eased the pain of the hospital bill once Judd got released, but it didn’t ease the pain of the post traumatic stress that rained down on both of them. They didn’t know how bad it was going to get, but they swore to each other that they would be there, in sickness and in health. To be there through the good times and the bad. 

Every call Grace got was suddenly harder; whenever someone would stop responding to her, she immediately became panicked. Whenever the phone line went dead, or the person hung up, her hands shook. 

No one told her about the trauma that dispatch callers can have, but it’s real and it’s hard. She wants to help, but she’s left with a sinking feeling everytime she says “9-1-1, what’s your emergency?”

She thought she lost her husband. She thought she lost everything. She went through so much trying to convince herself that it wasn’t her fault that the men of the 126 died. She still holds onto that guilt, but in time it’ll get better.


End file.
